Popular Tags

Here is an article I wrote for Eureka Street, 16 August 2018. It is a Girardian reflection on the maiden speech of a Senator which puts the blame for many of Australia’s ills onto migrants, particularly Muslim people.
On the same day, I accompanied some students from Holy Spirit College Lakemba and another Sister of St Joseph to the local Mosque, where we expressed our sorrow at the targetting of Muslim people in our society. See photos here. [...]

On 23 August 2018 Malcolm Turnbull described the turmoil in the Liberal Party as “madness”. The word perfectly describes the situation which saw his term as Prime Minister brought to an early end. According to the insights of the great philosopher René Girard, “madness” describes the contagion of violence, by which someone, or some group, is punished for the perceived welfare of a dominant group – in other words, the concerted effort to find and punish a scapegoat. The bringing down of yet another sitting Prime Minister is an example of “scapegoating”.
Girard presents certain features of the scapegoating process [...]

An article entitled “Nation pulls weight on refugees” by Stefanie Balogh appeared in “The Australian” on August 8, 2015.
Its title, its selective use of figures, and its claim of Australian generosity in comparison to other nations in its treatment of asylum seekers and refugees, made it a misrepresentation of a Report which had been made by the Refugee Council of Australia.
To challenge this twisting of the Report, the CEO of the Refugee Council, Paul Power, wrote to the Letters Editor of The Australian. Here is his letter:
“Dear Editor,
It’s disappointing that The Australian misrepresents the Refugee Council [...]

On July 11, 2014 Clive Palmer and the Palmer United Party Senators pulled the biggest swifty so far on the Prime Minister Tony Abbott, forcing the expected scrapping of the carbon tax to be delayed. The PUPs, all Robin Hood look-a-likes for the moment, were grandstanding for all the tax offsetting perks to remain in the people’s pockets. Similar endowments have been used by all recent Governments to woo people’s support, rewarding them for simply existing. Should bring in a few votes, I suppose.
Rupert Murdoch’s Daily Telepathy was in high dudgeon: editors, commentators and letter-writers scrambling to outdo each [...]